If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ. You'll find answers to the frequently asked questions as well as basic rules. No need to register unless you would like to participate, although some images will only show if you are registered/logged-in.

You will need to register
before you can post: click the red register link or the register tab, above, right.

The WoodenBoat Forum is sponsored by WoodenBoat Publications, publisher of WoodenBoat magazine since 1974. To get WoodenBoat delivered to your door or computer, mobile device of choice, etc, click WB Subscriptions.

Selling/self promotion postings are verboten on the Forum. To advertise, take a look at WoodenBoat Advertising, or use your Google Adwords account if you want to advertise on the Forum.

I still have the copy of "Yachtsman's Ommnibus" which Mother won when she way young and which I now have. Mother considers Calahan the last word in all things sailing, but then she still thinks that the stem christie was the finest development in skiing. She does ride astride.

Here's a story about Calahan, by himself, from the Foreword to "Rigging," published by Macmillan in 1940.

He mentions how a reviewer had earlier referred to him as "prolific."

His excuse was that he had promised himself to write ten books on sailing in ten years. Having got as far as "Rigging," he'd then completed eight of the ten, so I suppose "prolific" was not an unreasonable epithet.

He also makes no apology for repeating himself a bit along the way.

Whether he completed the whole ten I'm not sure, but he wrote at least nine that I'm aware of -- or ten if you include one in conjunction with another writer.

---------

Another "prolific" writer about sailing who comes to my mind is Francis Cooke, a couple of decades earlier. I'm not quite sure how many books he wrote, but it must have been at least six or seven.

Cooke also repeats himself along the way -- unfortunately quite blatantly at times, by copying whole slabs of text verbatim from earlier books (and even including the same illustrations.) I always thought that was cheating, but I suppose he thought that, being on to a good thing, he'd better stick to it....

Regarding Calahan's output: my copy of the "Yachtsman's Omnibus" (7th printing, 1964) lists 10 books, the last of which is called "Hurrah's Nest". This post really took me back, as I hadn't blown the dust off this volume in 30 years.